How Relay2Trade works
A program on your Windows machine reads the groups you choose, extracts the trade from each message and places it on your own MetaTrader 5 account — inside limits you set. This page walks through all of it: what you need, how it is set up, what happens to a message, what you control, where your data lives, and how to keep it running around the clock.
What you need
A Windows machine
Windows 10 or 11, or Windows Server. Your own PC, or a small Windows VPS if it should keep running while your PC is off — there is a guide further down. Nothing to install on a Mac or a phone; the web monitor covers those.
A MetaTrader 5 account
At any broker that offers MT5. A demo account behaves exactly like a live one and is the right place to start. The app can install the terminal for you, or use the one you already have.
A Telegram account
Your own, already a member of the groups or channels you want to follow. The app signs in as you and reads only the chats you pick. Telegram is supported today; WhatsApp and Discord follow.
A Relay2Trade license
The app is a free download; a subscription activates it. Without an active license the app signs you in and waits — nothing else runs until one is active.
Setting up
The app walks you through these in order the first time it opens. Ten minutes, start to finish.
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1
Install and sign in
Download the installer from your account page and run it. It installs itself under your Windows profile, adds Start-menu and desktop shortcuts, and keeps itself up to date from then on: every release is signed, and the app verifies the signature before it installs an update.
- Sign in with your Relay2Trade account — the same one as on this website, two-factor code included if you enabled it.
- The app itself needs no administrator rights; it writes nothing outside your user profile.
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2
Activate your license
Pick a plan on the website. The app checks the license with our server and unlocks the rest of the setup. When a subscription ends, trading stops at the end of the paid period; your configuration stays on your machine.
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3
Connect Telegram
Sign in with your own Telegram account: phone number, the code Telegram sends you, and your two-step password if you have one. The session is stored on your machine only — we never see it, and you can revoke it any time from Telegram's “Devices” screen.
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4
Connect MetaTrader 5
If MT5 is not installed, the app downloads the official MetaQuotes installer and runs it — Windows asks for permission once, since the terminal goes into Program Files as it always does. Enter your broker server, login and password — the app hands them to the terminal once and does not keep a copy. It then attaches its bridge, an Expert Advisor called Relay2TradeBridge, to a chart. That bridge is the only channel it uses to read the account and place orders.
- Already have MT5 with your own charts and EAs? The app uses that installation and leaves the rest of it alone.
- The bridge only ever touches positions it opened itself. Your manual trades and other EAs are invisible to it.
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5
Add listeners
A listener is one group or channel plus the rules for it. Pick the chat from your Telegram list (or type an @handle for a public channel), give it a name, and choose a mode.
- Auto — signals are traded as they arrive.
- Manual — every signal waits for your approval on the dashboard.
- Watch — signals are recorded, nothing is placed. Use this to evaluate a group before trusting it.
A message, step by step
Every message in a listened chat goes through the same pipeline. A signal is typically on the broker within a few seconds of the message arriving.
The message arrives
The app receives it through your Telegram session, like any other client you are signed in on. It only looks at chats with a listener.
Cheap first cut
By default a message must contain at least one number and one trading word (buy, sell, long, short, tp, sl, entry, target, stop) to go further. Chatter never leaves your machine. Per listener you can turn this off and send everything.
AI extraction
The message text is sent to our server, which asks an AI model one narrow question: is this a trade instruction, and if so what are the instrument, side, entry, stop-loss and take-profits? Instruments are normalised (“gold” becomes XAUUSD), entry zones and percent-based levels are understood, and recaps, results or “TP hit” updates come back as not-a-signal. We do not store the message.
The risk engine
On your machine, the parsed signal meets your rules: symbol whitelist, trading hours and days, daily loss and equity floor, position and lot caps, cooldown, duplicate detection, spread. The lot size is computed from your sizing mode and the stop distance. Anything that fails a rule is skipped, with the reason written into the signal's story.
Orders
The bridge places the orders: at market, or as pending orders at the stated entry if the listener is in limit mode. Several take-profits mean one order per target when you choose “split”. Every order carries a stop-loss — either the signal's or your default, or the signal is refused. In manual mode this step waits for your click.
Management
As take-profits fill, the stop-loss of the remaining orders can ratchet forward (break-even, behind the last TP, or a fixed distance) — forward only, never back. Pending orders expire after your TTL, optionally falling back to a market entry if the price is still close.
The story
Each signal keeps its full story on the dashboard: the parse, every rule it passed or failed, each order and its result. With remote sync on, the same story appears in the web monitor — so you can check from your phone what happened and why.
The rules you set
The app never places an order outside these. Global settings apply to every listener; a listener can be stricter, never looser.
Position sizing
- Sizing mode: a percentage of equity per trade, a fixed lot, or a fixed cash amount at risk
- Absolute lot cap per order, whatever the sizing says
- Multiple take-profits: split across targets, or only the first or last
- Trailing stop as targets fill: break-even, behind the last TP, stepped, or a set number of pips
Safety limits
- Max open positions overall, per symbol, and per signal
- Max trades per day and max signals live at once
- Daily loss circuit breaker and an equity floor kill-switch
- Cooldown between entries; duplicate detection by symbol, side and levels
- Max margin use, max slippage and max spread at entry
- Total open lots, overall and per symbol
Trading window and stops
- Require a stop-loss, or place a default one at a distance you choose
- All-or-nothing on multi-target signals that do not fully fit
- Trading hours (broker time) and trading days
- A symbol whitelist — only these instruments, from any group
Per listener
- Mode: auto, manual or watch
- Risk multiplier and a daily trade cap for that group only
- Entry at market, or a pending order at the stated price with a time-to-live and an optional market fallback
- Max deviation from the stated entry before a market entry is refused as chasing
- Symbol restriction and prefilter on or off
Where your data lives
The app is not reachable from the internet. When remote sync is on, it pushes to us over the same authenticated channel it uses to check its license — it never receives commands it did not ask for.
On your machine
- Your broker server, login and password (in the MT5 terminal, as always)
- Your Telegram session
- The list of groups you follow and every setting
- The text of every message the app reads
- Trade history, signal stories and logs
On our servers
- Your Relay2Trade account: email, password hash, two-factor secret — not your broker or Telegram account
- License status and Stripe references; invoices, as the law requires
- The device name and app version that last checked in
- Message text, briefly, while it is being parsed — never stored
With remote sync on
- Status: MT5 connected, Telegram running, which listeners are up
- A copy of your settings — the ones the web editor can change — so you can adjust them from the browser
- A summary of each signal: instrument, side, levels, the parse, what was placed and what happened
- Never credentials, never the Telegram session, never the message text
Changes made in the browser are only applied after a second factor and only once the app itself pulls them; the app remains the source of truth.
Running it 24/7 on a Windows VPS
Signals arrive when they arrive. If your PC is off, asleep, or out of battery, nothing is traded. The usual answer is a small Windows virtual machine at a hosting provider, running around the clock. It is still your machine: your credentials, your configuration and your broker account never leave it — we run nothing for you.
Picking one
- Any provider that offers a Windows VPS (Windows Server or Windows 10/11). The smallest plan is usually enough: 2 vCPU, 2–4 GB RAM, 40 GB disk — MetaTrader 5 and the app are light.
- Choose a data centre close to your broker's servers. MT5 shows the ping to each server in its login dialog; lower is better for execution.
- Budget roughly €5–15 a month. The VPS contract is between you and the provider; we are not involved.
Keep in mind
- Trading hours and days in the settings do the scheduling — no need to start and stop the app by hand for sessions you want to skip.
- Turn on remote sync and check the web monitor from anywhere; turn on two-factor if you want to change settings from the browser.
- The VPS holds your broker login and Telegram session. Use a strong password, keep Windows updated, and never share the RDP access.
- Your provider's uptime is now part of your setup. If they reboot the machine at 3 a.m., the app restarts — but any pending order handling in that minute is missed.
Step by step
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1
Order the VPS
Choose a Windows image. You get an IP address, a username (usually Administrator) and a password. Change the password right away.
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2
Connect with Remote Desktop
On Windows use Remote Desktop Connection (mstsc); on a Mac, iPad or phone, the Microsoft Remote Desktop app. Enter the IP, username and password.
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3
Install Relay2Trade inside the VPS
Open a browser in the remote session, sign in to your account here, download the installer and run it. Sign in to the app.
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4
Let it set up MT5
Enter your broker server and login. The app installs the terminal if needed and attaches its bridge. Use a demo account first if this is your first run.
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5
Connect Telegram
The login code arrives on your phone as usual. The session then lives on the VPS — you will see it as a new device in Telegram.
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6
Add listeners, set your limits
Start in watch or manual mode, check a few signals in the story view, then switch the listeners you trust to auto.
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7
Close the window — do not sign out
Closing the Remote Desktop window keeps the session alive and the app running. Signing out or shutting down would stop it. The app registers itself to start with Windows, so after a provider reboot it comes back on its own and reconnects.
Where the line is
Relay2Trade is software you run. We are not a broker, not an investment firm and not an adviser; we never hold funds, never access your account, and never decide what to trade. Every order is the product of your configuration acting on a group you chose. That is what keeps this personal automation rather than a regulated service — and it is why the app is built so that nothing runs on our side.
Ready to set it up?
Create an account, download the app and run it on a demo account first. The whole setup takes about ten minutes.